After our Welcome to Sydney Tour, most of the group had booked on to the Blue Mountains and More add on road trip. This was also through Welcome to Travel - they had booked our hire car and accommodation. They had also given us an advised itinerary of what to do while on our adventure in the mountains and on the coast.
Blue Mountains (Tuesday and Wednesday)
We picked up our hire car and left Sydney. The drive from the city to the mountains took around 3 hours (including a stop for lunch). We stayed at Blue Mountains YHA. It was cosy and comfortable. The atmosphere was very chilled out. The Blue Mountains were significantly colder than the city so it was nice that there was a fire in the common room of the hostel. We spent 2 nights in the mountains.
We arrived in Katoomba early Tuesday afternoon. We decided to walk down to the Blue Mountains National Park as soon as we got to Katoomba because we were unable to check in until after 4pm. We walked down to Echo Point to check out the Three Sisters rock formation. We then walked the track (and detour) to Katoomba Falls. The walk from the hostel, to Echo Point and then to Katoomba Falls took around 1.5 hours and was around 3km. After our walk, we went for an late lunch/early dinner at The Station Bar and Woodfired Pizza, which was amazing!!!
On the Wednesday, we had a relaxing morning before heading out to Leuca for a spot of lunch. We decided to hike to Wentworth Falls in the afternoon. The hike to the waterfall is approx. 1.5km and takes about 1 hour. On the way back to the car park, we took the Undercliff Track (the full Overcliff-Undercliff loop is approx. 3.5km and takes 1-2 hours). Both hikes are grade 3. The whole of our hike, including numerous stops for photos, took around 3.5-4 hours and was around 5-6km. Chloe and I did take a little detour which was much longer than the 15 minutes the sign said it would take to get back to the car park. The guys started to panic a bit because the sun was setting and the phone signal was patchy so they couldn't get hold of either of us. We eventually made it back to the car park much to everyones relief.
Port Stephens (Thursday and Friday)
We left the Blue Mountains around 10:30am on Thursday. We had a little car trouble which made our journey to coast much longer and meant we didn’t do any of the recommended stops. We stayed at Melaleuca Surfside Backpackers in Port Stephens. A very surfy place, home to however many possums, and in the middle of nowhere! Loved it! We had dinner at the beach café. Unfortunately, we missed sunset but we did sit on One Mile Beach until midnight just looking up at the Milky Way and the insane amount of stars.
On Friday, we all got up for sunrise which was beautiful. After showering and having breakfast at the beach café. After breakfast, we jumped in the car and drove into Nelson Bay. There we hiked to the summit of Mount Tomaree. The hike is approx. 2.2km return, 161m elevation (the hike feels almost vertical) and is a grade 5 hike.
After our hike and a spot of lunch, it was only right that we hit the beach for a bit of relaxation. After a couple of hours, it was time to move on to our next spot – Port Stephens Koala Sanctuary. The sanctuary aims to rehabilitate and release rescued koalas and other wildlife. Any koalas that cannot be rehabilitated due to injury or illness, live their life in luxury at the sanctuary. They currently have 14 koalas in residence. I think koalas are my new favourite animal, they are so cute!
To finish the day, we went to watch the sunset at Soldier’s Point. The sunset was even more beautiful than the sunrise we had watched that morning. It felt pretty cool to have seen both sunrise and sunset on the same day.
Return to Sydney (Saturday)
We set off from Port Stephens mid-morning to head back to Sydney. We had to take a couple of detours due to roads being closed and stopped off at The Entrance for a bit of lunch. The drive back to the city took much longer than expected and we arrived back in the city around 4pm.
Really grateful to Welcome To Travel for organising everything for the road trip. I really enjoyed the trip with the group and we packed a lot into a few days. It’s been a whirlwind couple of weeks in Sydney and the surrounding areas but I have had the best time! I'm so excited for the next adventure (again, thanks to WTT for helping me organise my trip up the coast). Thank you Lucky Ones for another awesome week!
You can book with Welcome to Travel via their website https://welcometo.travel
Thanks for reading!
Comments